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Tens of thousands of Republican voters in Iowa chose the most skeptical candidate they could find. The new landscape of Republican contenders is dominated by skeptics, but the voters wanted the most skeptical. Senator Ted Cruz is flagrantly outspoken, is well read, and brings rare debate on climate issues to Congress.

Voters came en masse for the Iowa Republican caucas. Normally 120,000 Republicans vote in the Iowa caucus, but this time 180,000 turned out. One polling station ran out of ballots. Ted Cruz received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in Iowa.

The last few fringe skeptics of climate change must have all moved to Iowa right?

This is how skeptical Cruz is:

Ted Cruz is the candidate the climate Extremists hate the most.

See the Gullibility Index

The ABC and SMH described Cruz’s win, but did not mention that he was a skeptic. He is just someone who appealed to the evangelical base.

Cruz is not liked by the establishment Republicans at all. Should be interesting!

The full 2 hour 40 minute testimony of Ted Cruz and his invited guests.

Don’t underestimate the importance of what is going on in this testimony to Congress. It captures why the USA is the best hope for defeating the religious climate meme. Which other western democracy comes close to this? As Mark Steyn says, the most important form of competition is the competition of ideas. Paris will not get a binding agreement mostly because the USA congress stands in the way. (Though that doesn’t mean they won’t get billions; more on that in the next post.)

The landscape of the US presidential campaign has undergone a phase change. Watch this and think back to the bland weakness of Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2015 the top Republican candidates are competing to be the most skeptical, and to demonstrate how they don’t pander to political correctness. And Ted Cruz surely is the best informed on the climate topics.

Judith Curry ” I can no longer get government grants….”

Please copy your favorite quotes below so those who can’t watch the lot can pick up the gems.

UPDATE: Best short parts are around 2:14 – 2:20 with Steyn and Curry. [...]

How many Presidential candidates are susceptible to groupthink, scare campaigns and low-base science agitprop? Thanks to Seth Borenstein, Michael Mann & Andrew Dessler we can rank them according to their ability to resist profoundly unscientific propaganda like “there is a consensus”.

Ted Cruz is clearly the best at holding his own in the independent thinker stakes. Ben Carson and Donald Trump do well. But poor Hillary Clinton doesn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of junk graphs, hyperbolic claims, and inane bumper-sticker cliches.

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Those who fall for the consensus argument are in no position to run a nation. Firstly it’s profoundly unscientific — we don’t vote for the laws of science; scientific theories are either true or not true regardless of opinions. Secondly, it only takes ten minutes of independent searching to find that there is no consensus among scientists as a broad group, anyway. There is a consensus among various definitions of certified climate scientists, but not among meteorologists , geoscientists and engineers or other hard science areas.

As I’ve said before, skeptics outrank and outnumber believers, they make planes fly, find mineral deposits, and walked on the moon. Believers produce climate models that don’t work. If [...]